It Waits

Really not a bad flick, but hardly a novel experience. We've got several clichéd main characters trapped in the deep Canadian woods. Great locations. A monster on the loose. A lead actress (Cerina Vincent) with a tank top. Good cinematography. Even a lovable parrot that somehow acts like a homing pigeon.

Oh, did I mention the MOR soundtrack? For some reason, this picture feels the need to break into song every so often. We get music by Melanie Monroe (?) designed to underline the poignancy of the moments...with a sledge hammer.

Meanwhile, the monster flies around making Predator-like sounds. Why, oh why, has that noise become such a horror movie staple? A passable time waster, but it with a little work it might have been so much more.

OK, but basically an average horror movie.

The most-excellent Cerina Vincent makes this better than it has any right to be.

I was not aware that US Forest Service rangers regularly operate hydroelectric generation plants. I also thought that they were armed, but apparently not.

The idea of a ladder-climbing elk is pretty good, though. But I didn't know that elk could turn vehicles over with their antlers. Guess you learn something new every day.

Very non-scary beast/demon/creature. Fortunately, they hold off showing it until a good way into the film.

Again, Cerina Vincent rescues this from the ho-hum.

Okay so at the beginning of this one some people blast an opening to some cave where they find some glyphs / 'ancient markings' .

Then we meet Danielle, who apparently works as some Engineer monitoring some dam or something, she has a parrot and loves to drink vodka right out of the bottle.

And JUSTIN, her BF? He has a couple of great lines when they speak

+1 Star for California Elk Pi$$ line

Wait is she not an engineer? She's some forest Ranger? Little bit of huge responsibility for a Forest Ranger to be draining a dam? And I can tell that the way Danielle talks she has no business being a forest ranger anyway. She sounds like a nutter.

-1 Star for Forest Ranger Danny being a nutter......

Apparently Danny's best friend Julie died in a car accident that was Danny's fault and Danny blames herself for her friends death. And Danny is obviously not dykey enough to be a forest ranger either. Anyways at least we get past all the mushy stuff and we get to Justin and Danny doin' it. Will they break the rule??? Yes it appears they will!!!!

-1 Star for a sex scene with absolutely no nudity. We don't approve!

Then somehow all their clothes got back on . There's some creature outside making noise. Justin says that ain't no bear!! He tells Danny to call for help and he gets his rifle!!!

Anyways that crisis passes. Then they meet the token couple hiking in the woods. They warn this couple of the creature that might be out there. Male hiker he doesn't like being warned! And he has a great line!!!

+1 Star for a great line!

Then that couple they run into that creature in the WOODS!!! And they both get a GREAT DEATH!!! And then RANGER TEAM they find their JEEP ripped apart,. And the camper bodies have been stsashed on top of their RANGER TOWER!!! Oh dear this creature is smart too!!! How it hung up that dead couple in the ranger TOWER!!! Wow really they bury this couple?? They got time to dig 2 graves? That's just really dumb. This creature could be anywhere.

-1 Star for not worrying about creature at all who just ripped 2 hikers up hung them up and skinned them

Then it's a good time for flirting and kissing. Danny and Justin just can't keep their hands off each other, despite being in TREMENDOUS FEAR FOR THEIR LIVES!!! IT IS TIME FOR SOME TONGUE HOCKEY!!!

-1 sTAR AGAIN!!!

THEN It appears that JUSTIN runs into the creature in the WOODS. I don't think he's gonna walk away from that one. Then Danny finds Justin's body on top of the TOWER. Danny has time for digging a grave for him too!!!! REally weird how much time she has to spend digging graves, with this creature out there who could appear ANYTIME!!!

OKAY now RANGER DANNY IS ON THE CASE!!! SHE STARTS opening cans of corn and beans and making a giant pile of......well OF CORN AND BEANS.....!! What is that supposed to be?? Bait???

So something shows up and Danny blasts that thing!! But there is no body!!! And Danny decides to escape with the PARROT!!! WAIT she's gonna track this thing?? LOL too far to walk to get the heck out of there?? But I can go track this creature to 'where it lives'. Oh dear.

Oh she finds that Justin's head was put on display also!!! And she digs a grave for Justins head!!! Oh and while she's wandering through everything she meets UNCAS, and UNCAS just happens to be living in some trailer nearby and tells her all about the CAVE SPIRIT that his students uncovered!!

But then she doesn't give up!! She continues her hunt!!!! She is rewarded!!!! She meets the creature and it doesn't kill her!!! It takes a bite of flesh out of her and flies off!!! Why?? Why does it fly off?? Why didn't it kill her????

-1 STar because it killed everyone else it met, except her.....

Okay so she finds the hiker's phone and calls her BOSS. HER BOSS comes and picks her up and on the way back they find A BODY MOUNTED ON A POLE!!!!

+1 STAR FOR THAT BODY MOUNTED ON THAT POLE RIGHT UP HIS COLO!!! Man you cannot unsee that lol

But BOSS he gets crushed!!! And Danny she's driving the JEEP now and she's on the run!!! Creature can fly and it's chasing her a$$!! Omg she craftily kills it with dynamite???? Wow is she smart!!!

So now she can walk out of there. Then she's talking to a COP? She says there's bodies up there somewhere, and she doesn't know who killed them!!! And then...THE PARROT shows up at her HOUSE?? How did the Parrot find her HOUSE? Okay what is the final score for this stinker???

I guess it finished with a 3. Boy what a pile of crap. A couple of good lines but the rest of it, pretty damn bad. 3/10.

Casual channel surfing this morning-and ended up watching this On SciFi Channel. I was kind of impressed- The main character's angst and predicament and her guts in confronting the bad stuff reminded me of Siggy Weaver's Ripley character. I liked the setting and the Ranger stuff. I liked Dr Riverwind(for all of 5 minutes). The character parts of the story were more interesting than the actual "horror movie" stuff. Actually made me care enough to sweat out the action sequences. I was curious who the writer was and when I saw Richard Matheson it confirmed my suspicions that this script was not dreamed up in a frat house over a vat of vodka jello shots but was the work of a decent writer. I thought Cerina did a great job in her portrayal.

And Hoppy ROCKS! He and Jonesie from Alien should get together someday( over vodka jello shots) and trade war-stories.

For some reason while watching IT WAITS it occurred to me that this movie looks and feels a bit like some sort of 90 minutes long stand alone episode of THE X-FILES (but only without Scully and Mulder running around in it and it's not about aliens either). So that already hints that IT WAITS isn't that bad at all. But as far as 'look & feel' goes, that's where the comparison ends. While on the surface IT WAITS looks like your standard run-of-the-mill creature-in-the-woods feature, it does have a little more to offer. The drama-aspects, predominant in the first half of the movie and coming back with a final twitch in the end, were something you wouldn't exactly expect in the first place from a movie like this and they were even well-developed too. So what am I talking about exactly? I'll keep it vague, so no spoilers. Cerina Vincent (looking good as ever) plays a troubled young ranger, Danielle, coming to terms with her personal demons from the past regarding a traumatic experience and her on-going issues with her boyfriend Justin (played by Dominic Zamprogna, who has a pleasant on-screen charisma). Her location of choice to do all that (and get wasted on alcohol during the process too) is a remote forest outpost. Like I said, the dramatic subplot is interesting, told in a decent fashion and very well portrayed by Miss Vincent. I could only appreciate it, even though I think they over-used the inappropriate tragic/romantic rock songs on the soundtrack.

What about the creature? You very soon learn that it's some demon from a Native American legend. But only later in the movie you learn a bit more about its history and characteristics. The sequence where you learn all that information really felt a bit easy and out-of-place. But I agree that it was necessary to flesh out the character of the creature. The demon-beast itself is a nice creation by Tony Gardner (check out his resumé and you'll find out that the guy always does a good job). It might remind you of The Creeper from JEEPERS CREEPERS mixed with a little bit of PUMPKINHEAD and a face ten times more vicious than any possible demon from the BUFFY series. But it still looks pretty unique. Some of the CGI shots of the creature where a bit less convincing. The kills in this movie are pretty good and gory, and the fun stuff includes that some of the corpses tend to pop up here and there, because our demonoid creature is just a bit more cunning and devious than your average beast.

Another nice touch about IT WAITS is that it's not about a bunch of people (whether it be teenagers or military folks or whatever) fighting some creature in the woods. From the second half of the movie onward, it's Danielle who has to battle it out on her own with the creature. It's Woman vs. Beast here, where the beast could easily be a metaphor for her own dark demons she has got to come to terms with before the movie's closure. And then there's also a nice little supporting role for… a parrot! Now if you want to know how all that works out, you'll just have to watch the movie. I liked IT WAITS more than I expected, but I'll try to temper my enthusiasm in my final rating. Because it still remains just an above average creature feature with a few extra merits going for it (the nice cinematography and the beautiful, mist-laden Canadian forests as scenery being two I haven't even mentioned yet).